Feature Friday: Buying Bitcoins Instantly

Our portfolio company Coinbase introduced a new feature yesterday, the ability to buy Bitcoins instantly. I've always thought speed was the single most important feature of any app. And in the case of buying Bitcoin, the four day wait time that was the norm at Coinbase was certainly problematic. Now, if you are a fully verified user, you can buy and sell up to 50 BTC instantly.

Bitcoin is a fairly immature technology at this time. The opportunity for entrepreneurs is to build technology, systems, processes, procedures, and a lot more on top of it so that it can become something "normals" will be comfortable using.

There are reasons why it used to take four days to settle a BTC purchase at Coinbase. And they've done a bunch of things to make it possible for a verified user to buy instantly. Over time, I expect they will build more things that will make it easier for a new user to get this kind of capability.

Many people are focused on the price of BTC and whether it is going up or down. Speculating on BTC is obviously one way to make (or lose) money right now. But I think the bigger opportunity is in making Bitcoin easy to understand, buy, stell, store, and transact in. And that will take a lot of engineering, innovation, and other efforts. So I am glad to see Coinbase engaging in that activity and rolling new stuff out. That is going to be good for both them and the market in general.